Polling underway in Telangana
Hyderabad, Dec 7 : Polling began amid elaborate arrangements in all 119 Assembly constituencies in Telangana on Friday morning. Voting began at 7 am and will conclude at 5 pm, except in 13 constituencies classified as Left Wing Extremist-affected, where the process ends at 4 pm itself.
Over 2.80 crore electorate are eligible to exercise their franchise in the state, which has a total of 32,815 polling stations. More than 1.50 lakh polling officials, including reserve staff, are on duty.
Campaigning by political parties came to an end at 5 pm Wednesday.
Additional DG ( Law and order) Jitender Thursday told PTI that about one lakh security personnel, including 25,000 central paramilitary forces and 20,000 from other states, are engaged in poll duties.
A senior police official said security was beefed up at bordering areas which were identified as Left Wing Extremist-affected regions.
The Assembly polls in Telangana were originally scheduled to be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections next year, but the House was dissolved prematurely on September 6 as per a recommendation by the state cabinet.
The Congress has stitched together the 'Prajakutami' (People's Front) along with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI), to take on the ruling TRS, which is led by caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR).
The TRS, seeking a second term in office, is going alone, as also the BJP.
It is to be seen if TRS president and Caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's gamble to opt for early elections pays off.
While KCR was without doubt the star campaigner for TRS, the Congress and the BJP fielded their bigwigs for campaigning which turned out to be a shrill one.
For the Congress, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and party President Rahul Gandhi addressed election rallies. The BJP relied on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party president Amit Shah.
Rahul Gandhi also addressed joint meetings with TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
"We will win 100 seats," Rao repeatedly said in campaign meetings.
Rahul Gandhi said Wednesday the Congress-led alliance is confident of winning the elections "hands-down" and claimed that the KCR was showing "signs of nervousness and insecurity" in recent campaign rallies he addressed.
The BJP, which won five seats in alliance with the TDP in the last elections in 2014, said it ensured that there is a triangular fight in Telangana this time.
Meanwhile, state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Rajat Kumar Thursday said as many as 446 flying squads were in operation in the state to swing into action if any irregularity was reported and 448 static surveillance teams would also keep a watch on the situation. They would wait in the wings to take action, he said.
Besides, 224 video-surveillance teams and 133 video-viewing teams were pressed into service. There were 126 assistant expenditure observers and 123 accounting teams.
For the first time, the Election Commission is using Voters Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in Telangana.
As many as 1821 candidates, including a transgender, are in fray. Counting of votes would be taken up on December 11.
Huge sums of unaccounted cash and illegal liquor and other goods were seized since the Model Code of Conduct came into effect on September 27.
The total seizures stood at nearly Rs 135 crore, including unaccounted cash, illegal liquor and other goods, Kumar said Thursday, adding that the total seizures were 90 per cent more than that of the 2014 polls.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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